Librarians are no strangers to the blogging world and some of the earliest blogs i followed where indeed written by Librarians. The Librarian in Black blog by Sarah Houghton-Jan a Digital Futures Manager for the San José Public Library is definitely one that i have been keeping an eye on in a Library topic folder in my RSS reader over the years and always find interesting and valuable information.

Recently Sarah wrote a post on her blog that caught my attention about a new book published by LibWorld titled "Library Blogs Worldwide" in which she has written a chapter covering the United States Library blogging community (page 187).

The book was published via the Infobib LibWorld project and is available as a free download or a paperback from Lulu online publishers.

It offers thirty commentaries by local librarians on the state of library-related blogs in 29 countries! The forward by Walt Crawford provides a good summary of the volume and diversity that global library blogs offer.

In Sarah's chapter she asks the question "which came first, the librarian blog or the library blog?" She writes that the librarian did because they "began sharing information with each other and as more of us saw the power of the blogging medium, we began adopting the same techniques at work.". I agree with that answer and it probably mimics a lot of other industries and professions who have adopted blogging as part of their work 'duties' in the same manner.

Another good resource for comprehensive lists of blogs is the Blogging Libraries Wiki and an output of the LibWorld report is available from the LibWorld delicious account where they have tagged all the blogs mentioned in the book by country.

Recently one of my co-workers bugged me yet again about why i haven't been blogging (thanks Brent~)- my response was that i have been chatting over here @danielabarbosa and contributing and managing Synaptica Central (never as easy as writing you own thing!) and investing a lot of my 'free' time on the DataPortablity Project - all things that i love and feel passionate about---and of course the old end-of-year getting contracts in the door excuses...but those are all excuses and i just need to prioritize and be more effective. At last count there are at least 8 great draft ideas on my blogger dashboard- shame on me...

Someone wrote a letter to Daniel Tunkelang recently that i had been thinking that i would write myself to him and he responded with "How Do I Blog So Much? Great responses and The Noisy Channel is certainly one of my favorite new blogs that i recently started reading religiously as i ponder myself -"how does he blog so much?"- thanks for the tips Daniel!

Image|Mike Willis

In August i 'quietly' launched another blog with my colleagues - - this one an 'official' one for our Dow Jones Client Solutions Taxonomy Services and Synaptica solutions that i am responsible for as Business Development Manager in the Americas. It is called Synaptica Central and it has been pretty successful to date. It took Christine Connors and myself a while to get this blog going and many conversations internally as to who, what and why- sometimes i admit a bit frustrating but that was to be expected and all turned out well!

The thing that i however am the most proudest of is not the traffic or the response but the fact that my Dow Jones colleagues are starting to get into it (and i hope it isn't just because i ask them to!). Last week the Dow Jones Taxonomy Team was at the Enterprise Search and Taxonomy Bootcamp and we got most of the team to blog from there (and we have some that still need to be edited and published).

Here are some of the current contributors from around the world:
Christine Connors- Director of Semantic Technologies and Dow Jones and Business Champion for Synaptica- Princeton, NJ
Wendy Lim- Taxonomy Consultant Singapore -
K Biju- Taxonomy Services Manager Singapore
Julian Brierley - Global Taxonomy Specialist- London
Dan Segal- Manager Taxonomy Delivery - Princeton, NJ
Maggie Hammond- Taxonomy Consultant - Chicago, IL
Jim Sweeney- Synaptica Product Manager, Denver, CO
And of course my posts (although i spend more time doing admin stuff at this time)
And many more folks to come !

Personal blogging is one thing- but blogging as a corporate team is another game all together and i have certainly been learning how to manage across the board from a technology perspective (we are using Drupal) to a delegation perspective so all can participate with their unique voices. As I learn more about the process i will make sure to share my thoughts here as well since it has been and will continue to be a good learning experience for me on the use of Social Media within a corporate team.

Shel Israel, co-author of Naked Conversations points to the voice of the future employee with his post on 'Let me Blog." I completely agree with both Shel and Kyle who is currently doing an internship at our local NBC station (did you know that NBC11 now has chat with the 5pm news? cool stuff). Kyle is a journalism student at San Jose State University. A couple weeks back, I was at the San Jose Social Media club event and met Kyle briefly when we took a tour of the studio- he cracked me up when he said that he was hoping an earthquake or something would happen so he could see the 'action' buzz of the newsroom (i personally can live without that buzz).

Future employees (and many suffering current ones) want to be able to participate and innovate in the ways they are used to outside of the corporation. It could be blogging, tagging, video creation, mashups- whatever just let them be. Enterprises that create environments that allow for this within their confine (there has to be some based on business laws etc.) will not only get the best new future employees out there but will inspire their current ones .

I have handed out 10 copies of Naked Conversations to customers and colleagues- it is a powerful book with a great title for conversation. I have one copy left from the last batch i bought which i am saving to give to a financial services customer who is itching to blog about his business but is getting the squinty eyes from PR. I am hoping to see Shel and Robert over the next few days so they can perhaps add some personal thoughts to inspire and give him courage.

(Photo by Scott Beale from the book launch party- February 2006)

Last Spring Jeremiah gave me some good practical advice in section 321 and this morning i just got caught up on his blog (and as always there is plenty to consume)- Web Strategy by Jeremiah and yet again some right on practical advice...and just the reminder that i needed right now. Thanks buddy.

In my attempt to make new friends at SLA i have setup a couple of blog alerts (google, technorati and have a bookmarked a search (they don't seem to have alerts yet) on Zuula thanks to Debbie Weil's pointer.

One of the posts i just read that i thought was interesting was a press release posted on Noticias tech on a new survey report from LexisNexis on "Information Professionals Use of Web 2.0 and Knowledge Management to Add Value to Their Organizations". Since they put the press release out advertising the survey, I will go visit the LexisNexis booth to see if they are distributing copies of this report. Survey Methodology is explained in the press release but out of 1,500 LN customers they pinged- 107 responded- so we are not talking about a huge response rate. Only Information Professionals as defined by the Special Libraries Association were asked to participate and those are defined as "someone who strategically uses information in his/her job to advance the mission of the organization".

Although i giggled when the survey described it as Weblogs (do we still use that term?)- according to their survey, nearly four in ten access Weblogs at least weekly (39%).

A quick search (i couldn't find any 2007 data) tells me that the Pew Internet & American Life Project reported that in January 2006 Internet users read someone else’s online journal, web log or blog - 39%. An Internet user is defined as anyone who has “ever done” an online activity.

Maybe this is daniela sitting in the Silicon valley echo chamber speaking- but if information professional are tasked to "advance the mission of the organization"- shouldn't they be more engaged in the blogsphere then the typical Internet user?

There has been a recent meme in the blogsphere about Social Media as a new Resume/CV with a big focus on Blogs,Video and Google searches in general. I got tipped off to it via Jeremiah's blog and then found a nice roundup of posts by the blogger that originally started the meme Adam Darowski.

On both sides (employer and employee) user generated content is becoming more and more important to find good hires as well as attract good hires. A while back i even posted about some work we have done with clients to help them track and react through recruiting dashboards.

The funny thing is that right before i noticed the meme, i updated my Resume/CV to incorporate social media elements into the standard 'acceptable paper' format. Although many hiring managers and recruiters know enough to 'google' someone or find their blog, i figured it would be better to add those elements to a Resume/CV saving them a couple clicks. Taking a que from the Social Media Press Release, i added some dynamic icon links to my resume as follows:

• GoogleMe - (notting out some terms like for example Ben Kinsley- no it is not me)
• GMail
• YouTube
• MyBlog
• LinkedIn
• My Blip.TV channel
• Flickr
  

Some may ask why- hey they are going to find it anyway- might as well show them efficiency from interaction number one! I like this format since it removes some of the static elements of the traditional resume. This PDF resume in some one's DMS system will always point to my most recent activities yet it maintains the standard Resume/CV format that is currently acceptable.

Now the big question- would a employer/recruiter know enough to click on the icons?

The BlogHer Business Conference two weeks ago had the conference title of "How to Succeed in a Social Media World". The goal was to explore questions about social media in the business world and consisted of two days of various panels, conversations and networking opportunities from small to global enterprise businesses that have waken to the fact that Social Media is here to stay, continues to evolve very quickly and needs to be incorporated into your business strategy.

On the first day, a lab session took place in which four business blog case studies were presented through interviews with their main bloggers and it was obvious during those interviews that social media regardless if you are selling Giftbaskets, News, educating people on racial issues or selling financial products is an important tool. After the session, we broke into groups with the case study blogger to dig a little deeper and i joined Staci Schiller a marketing program manager from the Wells Fargo Education Financial Services group and a key member of the Wells Fargo Blogs team. I volunteered to report back to the bigger group what we learned in our discussion so below are my notes on The Student LoanDown™ blog case study:

The Student LoanDown is Wells Fargo's blog about financing a college education and they blog about student loans: applying for them, selecting them, repaying them etc.

How is the decision made as to which Wells Fargo employees Blog:

• the blogger needs to know how to write and be passionate and want to write
• has to have lifestyle experience - you can't talk about a subject if you haven't 'lived' it
• subject matter experts for example the Wells Fargo Historians (Congrats on reaching your first year anniversary!)
• recently they added a fictional character that was hired specifically for Stagecoach Island Community™ which is an online virtual community to create a financial literacy program for young adults- if you want to have fun on the island you need to have money and the program shows them how.
• how much time does it take the bloggers? Staci started spending about 20% of her time blogging but now spends close to 50%
• there are 5 people on the Student LoanDown all from marketing communications . All with full time jobs and blogging has been incorporated as part of their jobs.
• how do they figure out which writer writes want post? the team has experts on specific items so for example there are specific blogger that at specific times of the year are writing about scholarships

What are the internal processes for the Student LoanDown blog:

• The Wells Fargo Blog team is headed by Ed Terpening one of their first bloggers (HERE IS AN INTERVIEW WITH ED that Staci just posted announcing their first year anniversary of the Guided by History Blog)
• It took the team about 2 1/2 months the first time they wrote a post to get it approved through legal and risk management groups. There were obviously a lot of meetings and policies but into place
• The Student LoanDown was not the first Wells Fargo Blog but it was the first blog to talk about financials issues that affect Wells Fargo products and services
• Over the months (it launched in Sept 2006) the team has learn to 'negotiate' with the legal and risk management groups and the process is shorter for approval
• The team has weekly meetings to discuss upcoming posts

Blogging in a financial world- Compliance and Risk issues to deal with

• The financial banking world is full of compliance issues and the Student Loandown team are educated on all issues
• Compliance issues certainly affect the way they write and many times that are self conscious about posts- reading and rewriting them
• Many times they might want to be judgement but obviously can't because the reader might be a potential client so that affects how and what they write. Staci shared with us an example from a recent MTV show (she is a self proclaimed MTV fanatic) in which a young women was filing for bankruptcy yet was drinking a four dollar latte from Starbucks. Her post on the incident is here.
• Because of compliance issues they need to have very clear rules as to how readers can participate. From their blog "As a bank, regulations prevent us from obtaining your personal information—hence the restrictions in our blog comments that prevent you from submitting your full name. Also, we can't capture your blog's URL in our comments due to concerns about phishing". Their guidelines in the about page are very clear.
• We asked if comments had to go back to legal/risk management and they don't- the team can make the decision to post them- they do go back to them however if they don't feel comfortable.
• We asked if there have been any comments trashing Wells Fargo products and Staci said to date there haven't really been any but if they were on topic they would be posted. They are here to establish credibility in the community and being upfront and transparent is required.

How are they promoting and measuring in the impact of the Wells Fargo Blogs:

• They are not doing active promotion of any of their blogs but have gotten a lot of coverage in the main stream media mostly because of world of mouth and the novelty of a banking institution blogging
• They go out and contact influential bloggers in the personal financial blogging world
• THIS IS A MUST FOR ANY CORPORATE BLOG: they promote it internally- with over 170,000 team members who are providing services to clients and potential clients using them as a main distribution point is ideal
• They are still not able to track conversion to specific products and do not have a solid plan to do so
• They do use multiple online tools to track what people are saying about Wells Fargo (so hey this post should pop up!)

Overall, i think both Staci's stage presentation and our little breakout session were excellent and Staci did a great job of presenting the Wells Fargo Social Media Strategy. I extremely impressed with Staci's passion for what she does and i think that myself along with many others that participated in our breakout session where extremely pleased with what Staci shared with us. I did ask Staci if i could blog this case study and she graciously agreed- whatever she said with us on that day was sanctioned as public knowledge.

The one thing i did not ask Staci is how they came up with the Student LoanDown name-did someone bring it to the table when the idea started or was it a work in process with the team once the theme was decided? i think it is pretty clever- get the lowdown on borrowing money for college at the LoanDown!

If you attended Blogher and want to add additional thoughts that i might have missed please do- thanks.

Here are some other blog links that covered this specific case study:

• Live Blogging from Blogher from The Social Customer Manifesto
• Post from Clarke Lane on all the case studies from this session
• Post from In Women with Trust that highlights Staci's influence of getting Wells Fargo to be one of those companies that gets blogging
• Post from Licence to Roam covering the multiple case studies
• We'll Know When We Get There post that meeting Staci's was one of the highlights of the conference (i agree!)

I get recruiter calls every once in a while and at times, like when the Factiva acquisition by Dow Jones was announced the phone starts ringing extra- typical recruiting tactics- i know because i have delivered solutions to recruiting firms that deliver actionable news items like mergers/acquisitions, management moves etc. to the recruiters to help them find business opportunities.

The message today (and yes i will call you back) was an interesting one- he wanted to know how the recent global sales conference i attended last week and had mentioned in this post announcing my Blip.tv channel was since i hadn't posted my thoughts on it. Very cool and shows he is listening and perhaps making inferences based on what he is reading/not reading- there has been a lot of talk in the blogsphere about how blogs can essentially be your resume, and how 'sales' people like Realtors are finding new business opportunities using blogs (example here is a realtor that is tracking Cabo posts and left a comment on my blog)

I have no doubt that many recruiters are using blogs to find candidates and to find the 'right' time to contact candidates. Last summer i posted about how customers i work with- more and more are using non-traditional HR recruitment processes and how we have been helping.

I am very excited to announce that i will be speaking at the BlogHer Business '07 Conference in New York on March 22-23th. I will be on the panel on "How To Measure Social Media ROI" on the second day with Katie Paine and Lena West.

Last year i attended the BlogHer conference in San Jose, CA and really enjoyed not only the sessions but meeting a great bunch of women bloggers and learning some pratical blogging tips from them. I can honestly say that prior to attending i had been a bit concerned about the 'mommy' effect (only mommy bloggers) but was pleased to find that many kinds of bloggers participated and even the mommy ones had great things to share. I was glad that those wrong pre-conceived notions didn't stop me from going. Since then i have monitored many blogs from bloggers i met at that conference.

This year's annual Blogher conference is in Chicago in July, so this upcoming conference in New York is focused on Business blogging. The two day conference agenda certainly seems well planned and interesting and i wouldn't expect anything less from the conference organizers. I am also excited to meet bloggers that i have been reading recently like for example Marianne Richmond one of the fellow Media2.0 group members.

As a speaker i have been given the opportunity to share with my readers this discount code. Anyone who signs up between now and March 15 with this code: BHBSK-DSC will receive $100 off the cost of the event. Registration is here: www.acteva.com/go/blogher

See YA at BlogHer!

Last week i was visiting with a client and the topic turned to the use of Blogs by companies to communicate both externally and internally. As we continued to talk we targeted in on the use of Blogs for internal communication and creating synergy within work groups. So on my list of follow-up items for this customer was to:

• Send them a copy of Naked Conversations by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel- They hadn't read it yet and since i read the book last spring i have sent it to a handful of clients and prospects because it provides an awesome foundation as to the importance of blogs.
• Send them information about internal corporate blogging, specifically case studies and information to build a business case. A bit harder to find. So below are some items i will be sending (actually i will just send this post!).

Early last year i started talking about internal blogging and since then have also seen some great uses of blogging tools within my customer base, including promotion of library information services, executive 'voice' blogs, and group work blogs- but aside from generalizations it is hard for me to discuss specific case studies due to confidentiality agreements. So here are some items:

• Just this week, Rod Boothly from Innovation Creators posted a detailed post on 'How to use Blogs in the Workplace'. He has had other posts in the past that would be of interest to companies that are evaluating internal blogs including, Enterprise blogs cost $50K - so why aren't there more? and Enterprise Blogging.
• Suw Charman over at Corante has a category on 'dark' or internal blogs which includes this case study from an European pharmaceutical company (hopefully more are fore coming on this topic)
• Gilbane's Report from March 2005 on Blogs and Wikis: Technologies for Enterprise Applications?
• A glance at IBM internal Blogging
• Charlene Li's Forrester's Report on Blogging platforms.
• In Optimize: EMS: Adventures In X-treme Web 2.0 Specialty retailer EMS uses blogs, wikis, and BI tools to expand collaboration internally and externally with business partners.
• A couple of articles i found in the factiva archive that are not available on the web so i won't link to.

If you have additional resources you can share about internal blogging in the enterprise please add to the comments! thanks-

I have posted before about my use of blogs in my 'sales' cycle. Last winter i put together an internal communication call BlogitUP! for my coworkers with resources on utilizing blogs to understand our customer better and to engage with them outside of the traditional methods. I am pretty sure that most did not listen at the time and i honestly didn't expect them to but more and more i have also been getting pinged - can i leave a comment? how do i do that without sounding like a sales pitch, etc. Well my response is always to be sincere and build a relationship with the blogger, and by relationship i don't necessarily mean comment multiple times and act like you are courting them - just communicate with them on the topics that you and they are interested in and you can potentially assist them with in meeting their goals or yours.

I got a kick out of a comment that Pam Wood from Coldwell Banker Riveras Realtor in Cabos left on my last post. She was sincere and shows that she is listening to her marketplace perhaps through a blog alert? Too bad i am not in the market for Mexico real estate- but if you read this and you are please contact me ;-)- see how effective she was- right on!